Boris Johnson, Nice and the situation in the world...

Yesterday, France was shocked by yet another sickening terrorist attack. This time the sunny, Mediterranean city of Nice witnessed a giant massacre, when a rogue truck driver ploughed his way through a crowded boulevard on the 14th of July – the French national remembrance day – trying to hit and kill as many people as possible.

By doing so, the alleged terrorist (or psychopath) killed 84 men, women and children and dangerously wounded many, many more. Words fail to express my distress and anger about yet another bloody attack against innocent civilians by yet another lunatic with a grand vision of getting even with, whatever...

... and the fresh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, decided a few days earlier that the former mayor of London, Boris Johnson,  was the best man to become Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in the UK.

The situation in Eastern Europe is getting out of hand, as the Russian Federation and the NATO seem on a collision course, in the aftermath of the occupation of Crimea by the Russian army and the subsequent civil war in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

Hawks in the governments of the Baltic States, Ukraine and Poland urge the NATO to expand its presence in their countries and the NATO itself sees this as a golden opportunity to regain power and influence, as well as a new raison d’etre, as the latter had vanished at the end of the Cold War. The tone of voice of the NATO against Russia is increasingly loud and shrill and its siren’s call for new member states is luring countries like Georgia and Ukraine.

The European Union is maintaining their economic boycotts against Russia and the cry within the Union to establish a pan-European army sounds louder and louder. And both the EU and the NATO seem ‘birds of a feather, who flock together’ to the eyes of the common Russian.

The Russian Federation itself, represented by its power-hungry, corrupted and blunt, mucho-macho President Vladimir Putin, feels threatened by the increasing presence of the NATO in its backyard. In return the country is uttering hardly covered threats to the Eastern European countries and the West in general.

The whole situation in Eastern Europe is like a leaking powder keg in an arsenal, of which all parties hope that nobody lights the fuse by accident...

... but Theresa May couldn’t find a more capable man for the sensitive Foreign Affairs portfolio than the former journalist of the Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson... A man, who has been making up stories about the EU and about the way the EU operated in Brussels; out of sheer calculation and hunger for money and success. That all these stories where blatant lies and ruined the image of the EU in his home country, Boris Johnson did not care about at all.

The presidential campaign for the successor of the moderately successful and not very strong president Barack Obama in the United States of America, is fought between:

• a lady with a serious security problem and a legacy of too many “dead bodies” floating around everywhere, coming from her earlier political career as Foreign Minister and First Lady. A lady, who is quite capable at her job, but not loved and trusted anymore...
  
• and a Gung Ho business man of questionable repute with a loud mouth, crazy ideas and a lot of bad jokes. A man, who seems to be the poor man’s hero, unless these poor men are either of Mexican or Arab descent or belong to other minority groups. And a man who is at best(!) not very respectful towards women.

Both presidential candidates have an awkward past and many political enemies inside, as well as political adversaries outside their countries; in Congress, but also in the Arab world, the Far East and the Russian Federation. Both candidates need to walk on eggs in the future, but might eventually not possess the capabilities for doing that.

Their closest ally and that of their country – the UK – could help them a lot in the process by finding the best and most capable Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. A man who could revive the special relation between the United States and the United Kingdom...

... and fortunately, PM Theresa May managed to bind the former conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson: the man who was extremely successful in leading its country to the exit of the EU with his Brexit campaign. And also the man, who subsequently ran like hell when he was caught with his (political) ‘pants hanging below his knees’, as he finally understood what the consequences of his actions were.

Theresa May chose a man with a past as a blatantly lying journalist and a cowardlike stance after the Brexit. A man, who was probably not the worst mayor of London in history and perhaps even a quite good one, but nevertheless...

Does ‘the new Margaret Thatcher’ of the United Kingdom, PM Theresa May, really think that Boris Johnson will stand his ground in the presence of Russian president Vladimir Putin or his henchman, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov?

Or when he visits Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the power-hungry and designated president-for-life of Turkey? The man whose country is indispensable for the NATO, but who has his own hidden agenda to follow? An agenda that might damage or even endanger the Western interests?!

Or in the presence of Chinese president Xi Jinping, perhaps, who is willing to defend his newly occupied islands in the South Chinese Sea with brutal force against the Philippines, Vietnam and perhaps even the United States?!

And does ‘Iron Maggie 2.0’ think that the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the 27 EU countries are trusting Boris Johnson in situations, where the EU and the UK need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and defend their commonly shared interests?! The man who pushed EU member the United Kingdom into the Brexit, before crying for his mother and subsequently playing political hide-and-seek?!

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is the tendency of this popular expression.

Well, the terrible events in Nice showed that the going is getting extremely tough at this moment...

... and Theresa May, in a massive response to the chaotic events after the Brexit referendum, made Boris Johnson the new Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. 

The tough are perhaps going indeed..., but definitely not in the United Kingdom.

Goodbye to the ‘mainports’ Schiphol Amsterdam Airport and the Port of Rotterdam. Welcome to the Dutch ‘Brainport’ locations and innovations centres that yield the real ‘high added value’ jobs.

Roughly one year ago, I wrote an article in which I ‘complained’ that the emphasis in The Netherlands was lying on ‘low added value’ distribution and commercial jobs, with regard to goods, services and internet hosting:

My point is that – in my humble opinion – The Netherlands increasingly turns into a country, which picks up the breadcrumbs that other countries, large companies and institutions leave for it. Very efficient and cost-effective in the execution of its job, but increasingly harmless as a competitor in heavyweight technological areas, in which the real money is earnt.

Instead of standing on its own two feet with its own products, innovations and a substantial number of globally leading companies, the country seems to become more and more satisfied with being the Olympic Champion of the Servants. To me, that is a worrisome development:

• As the focus of The Netherlands increasingly lies on the low-cost distribution of imported goods and bulky materials – domestically as well as all over Europe – through cargo vessels and trucks, The Netherlands has seemingly turned into the official ‘mailman’ of China and the Far East: cautiously taking care that every consignment is delivered at the perfect place and perfectly on time, but with a relative importance that is becoming more and more futile;
  
• With its massive web of tax rulings and its generally favourable fiscal legislation with many mischievous loopholes in it, The Netherlands is the spider in the web for multinationals, large popgroups (f.i. U2 or Rolling Stones) and wealthy persons to avoid (‘some say’ evade) their corporate and income taxes; 
• This led to a host of ‘fake’ head-offices and letter-box firms in the country, that are simply there to easily avoid taxes; not for the entrepreneurial atmosphere in The Netherlands;
  
• And last, but not least, another new spearhead in The Netherlands is data storage, hosting and data distribution for large internet companies and internet services providers. The consequence is that The Netherlands is currently establishing a massive data hosting infrastructure (i.e. internet backbones) and large number of data storage centers for companies as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the likes of them.

While one could easily disqualify last year’s call of mine as ‘the usual stuff from a professional agitator with an obstinate opinion’, I received a few endorsements from unsuspicious sources during the last two weeks.

On July 1st, 2016, the daily newspaper Volkskrant printed a summary of a report from the official Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure:

'Cabinet lays too much emphasis upon the importance of Schiphol and the Port of Rotterdam for The Netherlands.

Even though this claim is often made, Schiphol and the Port of Rotterdam are actually not the main driving forces of the Dutch economy. In order to improve the climate for the establishment of businesses in The Netherlands, the national government should not only make their ‘usual’ investments in those two ‘mainports’. Only aiming at volume growth of Schiphol and the Port of Rotterdam is not what ‘tomorrow’s economy’ demands from the Dutch government'.

This was stated by the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (RLI), in an official advice that was offered to the Cabinet last Friday. Under the tell-tale title ‘Beyond the mainports’, the official advisory body added question marks to the permanent growth ambitions of Schiphol and the Port of Rotterdam. The addition of these mainports to the Dutch economic growth is less significant than Cabinets tend to think, is concluded by the Council.

The indirect added value of Schiphol to the Dutch economy in 2015 was roughly €9 billion. That is 1.4% of the Dutch Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which stands for the production of all goods and services within The Netherlands, including those by foreign companies. The Port of Rotterdam adds another 3.1% to that GDP, but the port is in a declining trend nowadays.

Only governing towards expansion of goods and human traffic flows via those two ports is senseless, according to the advisory body. ‘The climate for business establishment in The Netherlands is decided by many more factors than Schiphol and Rotterdam alone'.

For instance the ‘Brainport Region Eindhoven’ is getting increasingly important as economic core area for The Netherlands and it can show better growth rates than the two aforementioned mainports.

And, as a genuine bombshell in favour of my argument from last year, there was an interview with the retired Professor Albert Pols of the Delft’ Institute of Technology, printed in Het Financieele Dagblad on Saturday, 9 July. Here are the pertinent snippets:

“Either I was twenty years too early or the Council was twenty years too late”. 

Nevertheless, Albert Pols, retired Professor Design and Planning at the Delft’ Institute of Technology (TU Delft), feels himself endorsed in his opinion that the Dutch mainport policy is a waste of money.

In 1997, Albert Pols – in a report on behalf of the Scientific Council on Government Policy (i.e. WRR) – heavily criticized the Dutch mainport policy. Already then, he judged that everything was wrong about the official strategy to position The Netherlands as a distribution stronghold.

Pols was an adamant adversary of the large infrastructural projects of the Nineties, in order to reinforce those two mainports: 

• the establishment of the  ‘Betuwelijn’ (i.e. a special railway to Germany for the transport of bulky goods, coming from Rotterdam) or
  
• the establishment of the Tweede Maasvlakte (i.e. new land, created through drainage, that was developed for industrial establishment and container shipping for the Port of Rotterdam). 

Those huge investments – north of €25 billion – would have had more effect, when the money had been invested in education and the development of new technologies (hence: nano technology).

“Rotterdam took its chance to (ab)use the mainport concept as an advertizing slogan. It was in fact advertizing malpractice, as Rotterdam never became a mainport in the first place and will actually never become one.

A mainport is a sea junction where cargo is concentrated and subsequently redistributed to other ports all over the globe. Singapore is an example of a mainport. 

However, in spite of their mainport policy, Rotterdam always remained a common transit port. Rotterdam became large as a transit port for coal and iron ore to the German ‘hinterland’. As a matter of fact, Rotterdam is 'the largest port of Germany'. For German stateowned companies, it was much easier to store their stockpiles of coal and iron ore in Rotterdam, than on their own ‘backyard’.

It is an utter illusion that "we" (i.e. the Dutch) are so good in logistics... 

When the government came up with the mainport policy, the electronics company Philips was clutching at straws and Fokker (i.e. a former Dutch avionics company) was already in deep, deep trouble. Unemployment was high. 

Infrastructure had to become the main driving force for the 21st Century. Education and research both suffered from fierce austerity measures set by the Dutch government and a shedload of money was invested in infrastructure instead, as ‘we were so successful in doing that’. Well, we have seen that. All our national, logistical players WITH added value have now vanished from the face of the earth: Nedlloyd, NS Cargo. And container terminal ECT is now owned by the Chinese.

Besides that, the margin in transport is minimal. The added value lies at the sender and the recipient of those goods; not in the hands of the distributor.

The Netherlands would have been better off, when we would have invested that money (i.e. the €25 billion invested in the mainports - EL) differently, or for instance would have reduced the corporate taxes with it. 

Which are today’s winners?! The answer has nothing to do with mainport development. The competition for added value is decided at the development of new products and services, with as a driving force the potential for innovation and the ample availability of venture capital”.

Professor Albert Pols is of course totally right with his observations regarding the mainports Rotterdam and Schiphol, that he made in the Nineties, as well as in the interview. The storage and distribution jobs that the Port of Rotterdam enables are of course decent jobs for the people that have them. Nevertheless, by sheer nature there is very little added value stored in these jobs. As the professor stated: ”The added value lies at the sender and the recipient of those goods; not in the hands of the distributor”.

Although professor Albert Pols did not state that explicitely, he probably also recognizes the fact that The Netherlands being ‘China’s mailman in Europe’, is neither very 'honourable' nor valuable for the country. Neither is The Netherlands being 'Germany’s warehouse manager'.

Through Rotterdam (as well as through other European ports), China is flooding Europe with its vast steel surplusses, sold at dumping prices nowadays. And also with shedloads of plastic and sheet metal household appliances, electr(on)ic toys, inexpensive consumer goods and cheap home electronics of often very poor quality.

Most of these goods are sold via toy stores and inexpensive department stores, as well as via the numerous discounters and outlet stores that are conquering Europe like wasps during a sunny garden party.

Especially those cheap, poor quality goods and plastic toys have a very negative effect on the amount of waste produced within the European Union, as they are often tossed away only hours or days after being purchased or presented: already broken and unrepairable and (therefore) utterly useless, plastic waste.

Therefore I fully endorse the professor’s message that the Port of Rotterdam is perhaps not the indispensable economic stronghold that The Netherlands needs more than anything else in the country.

The same goes for Schiphol. It is now a quite successful airport, which gains a lot of (in)direct, low and higher level service and distribution jobs for The Netherlands. Therefore it undoubtedly is an economic stronghold in The Netherlands.

Nevertheless, Schiphol is involved in a cat fight with the national airports of Turkey and Dubai – for transit passengers and international cargo – that it probably cannot win eventually, as the latter two are heavily subsidized by their respective governments and attract more and more attention within the aviation industry. The result would be an inevitable reduction in the number of transit passengers and cargo and thus economic decline for Schiphol.

And there is more. In the remainder of the FD article (see the aforementioned link), which I did not print here, the professor rejected the current plans for a seventh runway for Schiphol.

He is right! With six runways Schiphol already has more runways than most other airports in the world. Airports like O’Hare (Chicago), Heathrow (London) and Narita (Tokyo) serve many more airplanes and passengers with (much) less runways.

Myself, I have a sneaky suspicion that this seventh runway – and the accompanying, new passenger terminal that will be developed much closer to the city centre of Amsterdam – are rather meant as catalysts for the development of new commercial real estate on Schiphol’s turf, than out of sheer necessity for a safe and quick passenger handling. Especially when Schiphol’s plans to move the charter flights to Lelystad Airport will be continued indeed. Please remember where you read it first.

So let’s hope that the government listens indeed to Albert Pols. And indeed invests the money in better education, as well as in research and innovation. 

There is enough potential for innovation and research present in The Netherlands. Not only in the Brainport Eindhoven, but also in other Dutch hotspots where universities, research centres and innovative companies join their forces. As particularly those efforts will yield the real, new jobs with real added value for the country.

Please let China’s mailman do his job, as he is very good at it... 

But don’t forget to invest the government funds where they really make a difference. And that difference is not made at Schiphol or the Port of Rotterdam. 

Scout’s honour!

Does the ‘detached society’ in the construction industry indeed lead to a much higher number of fatal accidents in 2016? Or is it just ‘statistical coincidence’?!

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the detached society in The Netherlands. It was a story about leading, large companies, which are liable for their core business and/or key projects, but leave the execution and the ‘de facto responsibility’ to an opaque group of subcontractors and freelance professionals from all over Europe.  One of the protagonists in this article was construction company Van Wijnen:

Also Van Wijnen, the main contractor responsible for the construction of the distribution centre, has hardly any of their own people walking around on the terrain. The company guides 50 subcontractors and suppliers, which are all specialized in one particular part of the building process. Project manager Pieter Lammé at Van Wijnen is one of the few people who has a clear view on the big picture during the construction activities.

“When I started at Van Wijnen, 38 years ago, we still had masons, concrete workers, painters, crane operators and installers on our payroll”, according to Lammé. “Nowadays, we outsource all this specialist labour to other companies and freelancers. We are only directing the project”.

This is really shocking, when you let this text sink in to you:

One of the largest construction companies in The Netherlands only acts as a director in a feature film, who guides a bunch of leading actors and extras into making a notable performance, but does not feel ultimately involved in the quality of the final result?! It is almost like the people of [...] Van Wijnen are ‘accidental bystanders' in their own business processes.

This way, running a construction company is turning into running a trading and brokerage company; something that one can do, without ever having experience with bricks and mortar, concrete and steel at all. One just needs to bring together the principal with the chosen architecture, suppliers, structural engineers, freelance building professionals and executive engineers, as well as building materials and other supplies. That's all!

And what about the staff themselves, working for these companies? What will be their part in this deal?

[...]

Perhaps they are foreign workers from Eastern Europe or the Far East. People, who are deployed through (sometimes shady) ‘temporary labour organizations’, whilst hoping for a better future for them and their families.

I had to think about this particular article, when I stumbled upon the following news message from the Inspectorate for Social Affairs and Employment (“SZW” | news message originally in Dutch):

Right before the so-called ‘Constructor’s holiday’ (i.e. ‘bouwvak ‘ in Dutch – EL), there must be extra attention for safety!

During 2016HY1, the number of serious accidents in the construction industry rose by 14% and the number of lethal accidents even soared with 56%, in comparison with 2015HY1. The number of complaints under investigation and signals is 16% higher. The weeks just before the constructor’s holiday are a dangerous period in which extra attention for safety is necessary, especially now that the number of accidents is rising.

The largest number of serious accidents (42%), as well as lethal incidents (50%), in the construction industry took place within the common civil and utility building sector. Apart from that, the subsectors with the highest accident rate within the construction industry are excavation work, work on electro-technical building installations, demolition work, plumbing and painting, with 4-7% of the serious accidents and 10-20% of the lethal accidents in the building industry. Consequently construction belongs to the three most dangerous industries in The Netherlands.

Of all the accidents investigated by the labour inspection, it became clear that in a quarter of the accidents there was no direct supervision at the building site. [...]

“Both scale up and building sites changing in conglomerates of supervisors, workers, temporary workers and freelancers, increase the odds for accidents. Besides Dutch, many other languages like Polish, Romanian and English are spoken at the building site. As a consequence, miscommunication does occur. We see more and more constructors walking around at the building site, for whom it is not clearly arranged at all, WHO is actually responsible for their safety?! Also viable cooperation agreements lack between parties”, according to Marga Zuurbier, director Labour circumstances of the Inspectorate for Social Affairs and Employment (SZW)

There you have it!

Of course one has to be careful with statistics: when the absolute number of accidents is actually very small, a small increase in absolute numbers could lead to dramatic shifts in percentages.

Therefore it is a shame that in this case the absolute numbers are not mentioned in an attached statistics table.

Yet, I think that it is safe to state that also the absolute numbers of (lethal) incidents are substantial in the building industry, as it is a large industry with a lot of people working in it on a daily basis. That makes these increasing numbers so worrisome: they could be ‘just simple coincidence’, but the odds for that are not very big, in my humble opinion.

With the aforementioned story of ‘construction-director-without-constructors-on-the-payroll’ Van Wijnen in mind, it is impossible not to see the big picture behind these shocking accident data from the labour inspection: construction companies don’t seem to FEEL responsible for their workers anymore! Or, as I said in the older article: they are “accidental bystanders” in their own core activities! They just happen to be around!

It is like the both report and Marga Zuurbier of the Labour Inspection state (see red and bold text):

• in a quarter of the accidents, there was no direct supervision at the building site;
• Building sites changed in conglomerates of supervisors, workers, temporary workers and freelancers;
• There is a constant Babylonian confusing going on at the building sites, with all these different languages being used by the different worker groups;
• We see more and more people walking at the building site, of which we don’t know who is ultimately responsible for their safety.

For me these soaring numbers of (non-)lethal accidents, as well as the circumstances at the time and place of occurance, are definitely symptoms of the detached society, which I painted in my first article.

It is a very bad and dangerous development when main contractors (i.e. employers-in-chief(!)) A. don’t arrange the safety and physical wellbeing of their workers on the building sites and B. themselves not keep a “laser-guided eye” on that, in spite of the fact that they are ultimately responsible for ALL their workers.

Of course I don’t know whether construction company Van Wijnen itself is involved either in such accidents or in such poor employer’s behaviour at the building sites. I simply can’t proof this, just based upon the statistical data mentioned in this article from the labour inspection. 

The only thing that I know is that Van Wijnen is one of the poster companies, with respect to the detached society, as well as of the possibly deadly consequences that such a detached society could have for the people and workers involved.